Pukapukan is a Polynesian language that developed in isolation on the island of Pukapuka (Danger Island) in the northern group of the Cook Islands. As a "Samoic Outlier" language with strong links to western Polynesia, Pukapukan is not closely related to any other languages of the Cook Islands, but does manifest substantial borrowing from some East Polynesian source in antiquity.
Recent research suggests that the languages of Pukapuka, Tokelau and Tuvalu group together as a cluster, and as such had significant influence on several of the Polynesian Outliers, such as Tikopia and Anuta, Pileni, Sikaiana (all in the Solomon Islands) and Takuu (off the coast of Bougainville, PNG). There is also evidence that Pukapuka had prehistoric contact with Micronesia, as there are quite a number of words in Pukapukan that appear to be borrowings from Kiribati (K. & M. Salisbury conference paper, 2013).

Pukapukan is also known as "te leo Wale" ('the language of Home') in reference to the name of the northern islet where the people live. The atoll population has declined from some 750 in the early 1990s to less than 500 since the cyclone in 2005. Literacy in the Pukapukan language was introduced in the school in the 1980s, resulting in an improvement in the quality of education on the atoll.

The language is spoken by over 4,000 people,[citation needed] the vast majority living in a number of migrant communities in New Zealand and Australia. A bilingual dictionary was started by the school teachers on the island and completed in Auckland within the Pukapukan community there (publication date 2013; URL http://www.massey.ac.nz/~bwhite/PukapukaLexicon/lexicon/). An indepth study of the language has resulted in a reference grammar (Mary Salisbury, A Grammar of Pukapukan, University of Auckland, 2003 700pp.).
The most significant publication in the Pukapuka language will be the "Puka Yaa" (Bible), with the New Testament expected to be completed for publishing in 2013.

Pukapukan, also known as Bukabukan, is the core language spoken on the coral atoll of Pukapuka, located in the northern section of the Cook Islands (Beaglehole 1906-1965). Pukapukan shares minor intelligibility with its national language of Cook Islands Maori, and bears strong links to its neighboring Western Polynesian cultures specifically Samoa.
The island of Pukapuka is one of the most remote islands in the Cook Islands. There is evidence that humans have inhabited the atoll since 300 BC, but it is not clear whether it has been continuously inhabited. It may be certain that a final settlement took place around 1300 AD from Western Polynesia. Local oral tradition dictates that a giant tsunami produced by a cyclone came and hit the island and killed all the inhabitants except for 15–17 men, 2 women and a few children, from genealogy studies probably around 1600 AD. It was from these survivors that the island was repopulated. The island was one of the first of the Cook Islands to be discovered by the Europeans, on Sunday 20 August 1595 by the Spanish Explorer Alvaro Mendana (Beaglehole 1906-1965). Since then the language of Pukapukan has survived hundreds of years on the remote island of Pukapuka and has remained a strong link to the ancestors of its speakers.

The language of Pukapukan is not only spoken on the island of Pukapuka but on the neighboring Cook Islands as well as New Zealand and Australia. Today the population of Pukapuka has diminished with only a few hundred native speakers. From a 2001 census there were only about 644 speakers on Pukapuka and its plantation island of Nassau. As of a 2011 census, there are now only 450 speakers due to a devastating cyclone that hit the island of Pukapuka in 2005. There are a total of 2,400 speakers worldwide, including those who live on Pukapuka and the 200 speakers on Rarotonga, the most populous island of the Cook Islands.

The letters ‘y’ and ‘w’ are not in the Cook Islands Maori language but are additions to Pukapukan. The semivowel /w/ and the palatalised dental spirant /y/, in general, regularly reflect *f and *s, respectively. The ‘y’ sound in Pukapukan actually acts somewhat differently and is difficult for non native speakers to pronounce. It is pronounced like ‘th’ or ‘θ’ in English.

Pukapukan uses the two distinctive word orders of Verb-Subject-Object and Verb-Object-Subject, although it is clear that VSO is used more commonly. Adjectives always follow their nouns in Pukapukan. Waka is often used as a causative prefix in Austronesian languages, but in Pukapukan it has various functionalities. Due to Rarotongan influence ‘waka’ is shortened to ‘aka’, whereas ‘waka’ is seen to be more formal (Teingoa 1993).
Nouns prefixed by waka become verbs with similar meanings:

au, peace; waka-au, to make peace

la, sun; waka-la, to put in the sun to dry

ela; wedge; wakaela, to wedge

Adjectives prefixed by waka become transitive verbs:

yako, straight; waka-yako, to straighten

kokoi, sharp; waka-kokoi, to sharpen

Some verbs marked by waka have specialized meanings that become somewhat difficult to predict from the base meaning.

Pukapukan uses two different counting systems in the language; the ‘one unit’ and the ‘two unit’. Numeral classifiers are also used as prefixes for numbers over ten and different objects.
The ‘one unit’ uses its word for ten ‘laungaulu’ and adds the ‘one unit’ number (Teingoa 1993).

Pukapukan is not closely related to other Cook Islands languages but it does show substantial borrowing from Eastern Polynesian languages, such as Rarotongan. In fact, because there is no ‘r’ in Pukapukan ‘l’ takes its place in Rarotongan borrowings (Teingoa 1993).

There is a limited list when it comes to the language of Pukapukan. Although, today speakers of the language, locals of Pukapuka, and especially teachers on the island are working to put together books and resources dedicated to the teaching and structure of Pukapukan. Collaboratively the locals of the island are also working to bring back to their own community since the devastating Cyclone Percy in 2005. Since 2005 it has taken nearly 6 years to rebuild their communities (Pasifika 2009). Currently there are a select number of manuscripts and dictionaries on the language of Pukapukan, but their culture is kept alive through music and dance collaborations across the pacific and websites like YouTube.

According to Ethnologue Pukapukan is considered to be a threatened language and its “Intergenerational transmission is in the process of being broken, but the child-bearing generation can still use the language so it is possible that revitalization efforts could restore transmission of the language in the home (Ethnologue 2013). Speakers of Pukapukan especially children are multilingual in English and Cook Islands Maori, but English is rarely spoken outside of schools and many classes are actually taught in Pukapukan. Today, revitalization efforts of Pukapuka and its language is underway (Pasifika 2009).

Buse, Jasper (1995). Cook Islands Maori dictionary with English-Cook Islands Maori finderlist. Rarotonga, Cook Islands : Ministry of Education, Government of the Cook Islands ; London : School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London ; Suva, Fiji : Institute of Pacific Studies, University of the South Pacific ; [Auckland] : Centre for Pacific Studies, University of Auckland ; Canberra, ACT : Pacific Linguistics, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University.

PAWLEY, Andrew 1966. “Polynesian Languages: A Subgrouping Based on Shared Innovations in Morphology.” Journal of the Polynesian Society, 75:39-64.

1.
Cook Islands
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The Cook Islands is a self-governing island country in the South Pacific Ocean in free association with New Zealand. It comprises 15 islands whose total area is 240 square kilometres. The Cook Islands Exclusive Economic Zone, however, covers 1,800,000 square kilometres of ocean, the Cook Islands defence and foreign affairs are the responsibility of New Zealand, but they are exercised in consultation with the Cook Islands. In recent times, the Cook Islands have adopted an independent foreign policy. Although Cook Islanders are citizens of New Zealand, they have the status of Cook Islands nationals, the Cook Islands main population centres are on the island of Rarotonga, where there is an international airport. There is a population of Cook Islanders in New Zealand. In the 2006 census,58,008 self-identified as being of ethnic Cook Islands Māori descent, the Cook Islands are in the South Pacific Ocean, northeast of New Zealand, between French Polynesia and American Samoa. There are 15 major islands spread over 2,200,000 km2 of ocean, the islands were formed by volcanic activity, the northern group is older and consists of six atolls, which are sunken volcanoes topped by coral growth. The climate is moderate to tropical, palmerston Island sometimes grouped with the Northern Group. Manuae Winslow Reef The Cook Islands were first settled in the 6th century by Polynesian people who migrated from Tahiti, in 1813 John Williams, a missionary on the Endeavour made the first recorded sighting of Rarotonga. The first recorded landing on Rarotonga by Europeans was in 1814 by the Cumberland, the islands saw no more Europeans until missionaries arrived from England in 1821. Christianity quickly took hold in the culture and many continue to be Christian believers today. The Cook Islands became a British protectorate in 1888, due largely to community fears that France might occupy the territory as it had Tahiti, on 6 September 1900, the leading islanders presented a petition asking that the islands should be annexed as British territory. These instruments did not include Aitutaki and it appears that, though the inhabitants regarded themselves as British subjects, the Crowns title was uncertain, and the island was formally annexed by Proclamation dated 9 October 1900. The islands were included within the boundaries of the Colony of New Zealand in 1901 by Order in Council under the Colonial Boundaries Act,1895 of the United Kingdom. The boundary change became effective on 11 June 1901 and the Cook Islands have had a relationship with New Zealand ever since. When the British Nationality and New Zealand Citizenship Act 1948 came into effect on 1 January 1949, the country remained a New Zealand dependent territory until 1965, when the New Zealand Government decided to offer self-governing status to its colony. In that year, Albert Henry of the Cook Islands Party was elected as the first Premier, Henry led the country until he was accused of vote-rigging

2.
Rarotonga
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Rarotonga is the most populous island of the Cook Islands, with a population of 10,572, out of the countrys total resident population of 14,974. Captain John Dibbs, master of the colonial brig Endeavour, is credited as the European discoverer on 25 August 1823, the Cook Islands Parliament buildings and international airport are on Rarotonga. Because it is the most populous island, Cook Islanders may often be referred to as Rarotongan, Rarotonga is a very popular tourist destination with many resorts, hotels and motels. The chief town, Avarua, on the north coast, is the capital of the Cook Islands, the volcanic island of Rarotonga stands over 14,750 feet above the ocean floor. It is 32 km in circumference and has an area of 67.19 km2, at a depth of 4,000 m the volcano is nearly 50 km in diameter. Te Manga, at 658 m above sea level, is the highest peak on the island, the island is surrounded by a lagoon, which often extends more than a hundred metres to the reef, then slopes steeply to deep water. This part of the island is the most popular with tourists for swimming, snorkelling and boating, agricultural terraces, flats and swamps surround the central mountain area. Along the southeast coast off Muri Beach are four small islets within a few hundred metres of the shore. Paved and unpaved roads allow access to valleys but the interior of the island remains largely unpopulated due to forbidding terrain and lack of infrastructure. A large tract of land has set aside in the south east as the Takitumu Conservation Area to protect native birds and plants, especially the endangered kakerori. On May 30,1965, five sounding rockets were launched from Rarotonga for studying a solar eclipse, Rarotonga is divided into three main districts or vaka. Te Au O Tonga on the side of the island, Takitumu on the eastern and southern side. On the other hand, the island is divided into five Land Districts. In 2008, the three councils of Rarotonga were abolished. It passes the Te Rua Manga, the prominent needle-shaped rock visible from the air, hikes can also be taken to the Raemaru, or flat-top mountain. Other stops should include Wigmore Falls and the ancient marae, Arai te Tonga, there are many churches open for service on Sunday, with a cappella singing. The pace of life is so relaxed that at night people congregate at the sea wall that skirts the end of the runway to be jetblasted by incoming planes. Large cruise ships have to anchor off shore, Rarotonga is encircled by a main road, Ara Tapu, that traces the coast

3.
New Zealand
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New Zealand /njuːˈziːlənd/ is an island nation in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. The country geographically comprises two main landmasses—the North Island, or Te Ika-a-Māui, and the South Island, or Te Waipounamu—and around 600 smaller islands. New Zealand is situated some 1,500 kilometres east of Australia across the Tasman Sea and roughly 1,000 kilometres south of the Pacific island areas of New Caledonia, Fiji, because of its remoteness, it was one of the last lands to be settled by humans. During its long period of isolation, New Zealand developed a distinct biodiversity of animal, fungal, the countrys varied topography and its sharp mountain peaks, such as the Southern Alps, owe much to the tectonic uplift of land and volcanic eruptions. New Zealands capital city is Wellington, while its most populous city is Auckland, sometime between 1250 and 1300 CE, Polynesians settled in the islands that later were named New Zealand and developed a distinctive Māori culture. In 1642, Dutch explorer Abel Tasman became the first European to sight New Zealand, in 1840, representatives of Britain and Māori chiefs signed the Treaty of Waitangi, which declared British sovereignty over the islands. In 1841, New Zealand became a colony within the British Empire, today, the majority of New Zealands population of 4.7 million is of European descent, the indigenous Māori are the largest minority, followed by Asians and Pacific Islanders. Reflecting this, New Zealands culture is derived from Māori and early British settlers. The official languages are English, Māori and New Zealand Sign Language, New Zealand is a developed country and ranks highly in international comparisons of national performance, such as health, education, economic freedom and quality of life. Since the 1980s, New Zealand has transformed from an agrarian, Queen Elizabeth II is the countrys head of state and is represented by a governor-general. In addition, New Zealand is organised into 11 regional councils and 67 territorial authorities for local government purposes, the Realm of New Zealand also includes Tokelau, the Cook Islands and Niue, and the Ross Dependency, which is New Zealands territorial claim in Antarctica. New Zealand is a member of the United Nations, Commonwealth of Nations, ANZUS, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Pacific Islands Forum, and Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation. Dutch explorer Abel Tasman sighted New Zealand in 1642 and called it Staten Landt, in 1645, Dutch cartographers renamed the land Nova Zeelandia after the Dutch province of Zeeland. British explorer James Cook subsequently anglicised the name to New Zealand, Aotearoa is the current Māori name for New Zealand. It is unknown whether Māori had a name for the country before the arrival of Europeans. Māori had several names for the two main islands, including Te Ika-a-Māui for the North Island and Te Waipounamu or Te Waka o Aoraki for the South Island. Early European maps labelled the islands North, Middle and South, in 1830, maps began to use North and South to distinguish the two largest islands and by 1907, this was the accepted norm. The New Zealand Geographic Board discovered in 2009 that the names of the North Island and South Island had never been formalised and this set the names as North Island or Te Ika-a-Māui, and South Island or Te Waipounamu

4.
Australia
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Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and numerous smaller islands. It is the worlds sixth-largest country by total area, the neighbouring countries are Papua New Guinea, Indonesia and East Timor to the north, the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu to the north-east, and New Zealand to the south-east. Australias capital is Canberra, and its largest urban area is Sydney, for about 50,000 years before the first British settlement in the late 18th century, Australia was inhabited by indigenous Australians, who spoke languages classifiable into roughly 250 groups. The population grew steadily in subsequent decades, and by the 1850s most of the continent had been explored, on 1 January 1901, the six colonies federated, forming the Commonwealth of Australia. Australia has since maintained a liberal democratic political system that functions as a federal parliamentary constitutional monarchy comprising six states. The population of 24 million is highly urbanised and heavily concentrated on the eastern seaboard, Australia has the worlds 13th-largest economy and ninth-highest per capita income. With the second-highest human development index globally, the country highly in quality of life, health, education, economic freedom. The name Australia is derived from the Latin Terra Australis a name used for putative lands in the southern hemisphere since ancient times, the Dutch adjectival form Australische was used in a Dutch book in Batavia in 1638, to refer to the newly discovered lands to the south. On 12 December 1817, Macquarie recommended to the Colonial Office that it be formally adopted, in 1824, the Admiralty agreed that the continent should be known officially as Australia. The first official published use of the term Australia came with the 1830 publication of The Australia Directory and these first inhabitants may have been ancestors of modern Indigenous Australians. The Torres Strait Islanders, ethnically Melanesian, were originally horticulturists, the northern coasts and waters of Australia were visited sporadically by fishermen from Maritime Southeast Asia. The first recorded European sighting of the Australian mainland, and the first recorded European landfall on the Australian continent, are attributed to the Dutch. The first ship and crew to chart the Australian coast and meet with Aboriginal people was the Duyfken captained by Dutch navigator, Willem Janszoon. He sighted the coast of Cape York Peninsula in early 1606, the Dutch charted the whole of the western and northern coastlines and named the island continent New Holland during the 17th century, but made no attempt at settlement. William Dampier, an English explorer and privateer, landed on the north-west coast of New Holland in 1688, in 1770, James Cook sailed along and mapped the east coast, which he named New South Wales and claimed for Great Britain. The first settlement led to the foundation of Sydney, and the exploration, a British settlement was established in Van Diemens Land, now known as Tasmania, in 1803, and it became a separate colony in 1825. The United Kingdom formally claimed the part of Western Australia in 1828. Separate colonies were carved from parts of New South Wales, South Australia in 1836, Victoria in 1851, the Northern Territory was founded in 1911 when it was excised from South Australia

5.
Wikipedia
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Wikipedia is a free online encyclopedia that aims to allow anyone to edit articles. Wikipedia is the largest and most popular reference work on the Internet and is ranked among the ten most popular websites. Wikipedia is owned by the nonprofit Wikimedia Foundation, Wikipedia was launched on January 15,2001, by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger. Sanger coined its name, a portmanteau of wiki and encyclopedia, There was only the English language version initially, but it quickly developed similar versions in other languages, which differ in content and in editing practices. With 5,377,348 articles, the English Wikipedia is the largest of the more than 290 Wikipedia encyclopedias, in 2005, Nature published a peer review comparing 42 science articles from Encyclopædia Britannica and Wikipedia, and found that Wikipedias level of accuracy approached Encyclopædia Britannicas. Other collaborative online encyclopedias were attempted before Wikipedia, but none were so successful, Wikipedia began as a complementary project for Nupedia, a free online English-language encyclopedia project whose articles were written by experts and reviewed under a formal process. Nupedia was founded on March 9,2000, under the ownership of Bomis and its main figures were Jimmy Wales, the CEO of Bomis, and Larry Sanger, editor-in-chief for Nupedia and later Wikipedia. Nupedia was licensed initially under its own Nupedia Open Content License, while Wales is credited with defining the goal of making a publicly editable encyclopedia, Sanger is credited with the strategy of using a wiki to reach that goal. On January 10,2001, Sanger proposed on the Nupedia mailing list to create a wiki as a project for Nupedia. Wikipedia was launched on January 15,2001, as a single English-language edition at www. wikipedia. com, Wikipedias policy of neutral point-of-view was codified in its first months. Otherwise, there were few rules initially and Wikipedia operated independently of Nupedia. Originally, Bomis intended to make Wikipedia a business for profit, Wikipedia gained early contributors from Nupedia, Slashdot postings, and web search engine indexing. By August 8,2001, Wikipedia had over 8,000 articles, on September 25,2001, Wikipedia had over 13,000 articles. By the end of 2001, it had grown to approximately 20,000 articles and 18 language editions and it had reached 26 language editions by late 2002,46 by the end of 2003, and 161 by the final days of 2004. Nupedia and Wikipedia coexisted until the servers were taken down permanently in 2003. Citing fears of commercial advertising and lack of control in Wikipedia and these moves encouraged Wales to announce that Wikipedia would not display advertisements, and to change Wikipedias domain from wikipedia. com to wikipedia. org. Around 1,800 articles were added daily to the encyclopedia in 2006, a team at the Palo Alto Research Center attributed this slowing of growth to the projects increasing exclusivity and resistance to change. Others suggest that the growth is flattening naturally because articles that could be called low-hanging fruit—topics that clearly merit an article—have already been created, the Wall Street Journal cited the array of rules applied to editing and disputes related to such content among the reasons for this trend

6.
Pukapuka
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Pukapuka is a coral atoll in the northern group of the Cook Islands in the Pacific Ocean. It is the one of most remote island of the Cook Islands, on this small island an ancient culture and distinct language has been maintained over many centuries. The traditional name for the atoll was Te Ulu-o-Te-Watu, and the northern islet where the people normally reside is affectionately known as Wale, the modern name of Pukapuka usually said to derive from the puka tree, however, Puka-Puka itself also means land of little hills. Pukapuka is shaped like a three bladed fan, there are three islets on the roughly triangular reef, with a total land area of approximately 3 square kilometres. Motu Kō, the biggest island is to the southeast, Motu Kotawa is to the southwest, ko and Motu Kotawa are uninhabited and are used for growing food. The three villages are located on the bay of the northernmost islet of the atoll, Yātō, Loto. Loto is host to Island Administration, the traditional names for these villages are Takanumi, Kotipolo and Te Lāngaikula. In daily life, the islanders frequently call them Tiapani, Malike or Amelika, especially in sports competitions between the villages, the villagers use the names and flags of these countries. Although the island features an airstrip, flights from Rarotonga are very infrequent. The five-hour flight from Rarotonga via Air Rarotonga now operates when there is a Government charter once every six weeks or so. The island is closer to Samoa than to the rest of the Cook Islands and transport via Samoa is becoming an option for Pukapukans visiting in organised groups from New Zealand. The submerged Tima Reef is situated 23 km southeast of Pukapuka, about 60 km away is Nassau which is owned by the people of Pukapuka and considered part of it administratively. Since the 1950s it has been governed by the Council of Chiefs of Pukapuka, the Nassau Island Committee advises the Pukapuka Island Committee on matters relating to its own island. In the 1990s Japanese archaeologists discovered evidence of settlement dating back 4,000 years. The remnants include the bones of dogs that were dated to 2130 BC. Pukapukas closest prehistoric associations appear to be with Tonga and other islands to the west, Pukapuka was the first of the Cook Islands that Europeans sighted. The Spanish explorer Álvaro de Mendaña saw it on the feast day of Saint Bernard, on Sunday 20 August 1595, on 21 June 1765 the British Naval expedition under Commodore John Byron, consisting of HMS Dolphin and HMS Tamar, sighted the island. Byron gave the name Islands of Danger because of the reefs, the name Danger Island still appears on some maps

7.
Puka-Puka
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Puka-Puka is a small coral atoll in the north-eastern Tuamotu Archipelago, sometimes included as a member of the Disappointment Islands. This atoll is quite isolated, the nearest land being Fakahina, Puka-Puka Atoll has an elliptical shape. Its length is 6 km and its maximum width 3.3 km, the lagoon is filled with silt and has become very small. The low coral islands are dry and sparsely populated, according to the 2012 census, the total population was 166. The chief town is Te One Mahina, with about 110 inhabitants, unlike the rest of the Tuamotus, the language of the islands, Pukapukan, is Marquesic. Together with Flint Island they were named Islas Infortunadas Dutch explorers Jacob le Maire and they called this atoll Honden Eiland. On 30 July 1947, Thor Heyerdahl and his expedition aboard the raft Kon Tiki made their first sighting of land since departing Callao. The islands were devastated by a typhoon in 1996, however, with French assistance, Te One Mahina has been rebuilt. Puka-Puka Airport was inaugurated in 1979, Puka-Puka is the name of the administrative commune in which it lies, of which it is the sole atoll

8.
Ethnologue
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Ethnologue, Languages of the World is a web-based publication that contains information about the 7,099 living languages in its 20th edition, which was released in 2017. The publication is well respected and widely used by linguists, Ethnologue is published by SIL International, a Christian linguistic service organization with an international office in Dallas, Texas. Ethnologue follows general linguistic criteria, which are based primarily on mutual intelligibility, shared language intelligibility features are complex, and usually include etymological and grammatical evidence that is agreed upon by experts. These lists of names are not necessarily complete, in 1984, Ethnologue released a three-letter coding system, called an SIL code, to identify each language that it described. This set of codes significantly exceeded the scope of other standards, e. g. ISO 639-1, the 14th edition, published in 2000, included 7,148 language codes. In 2002, Ethnologue was asked to work with the International Organization for Standardization to integrate its codes into an international standard. The 15th edition of Ethnologue was the first edition to use this standard and this standard is now administered separately from Ethnologue according to rules established by ISO, and since then Ethnologue relies on the standard to determine what is listed as a language. e. A language with which no-one retains a sense of ethnic identity, in December 2015, Ethnologue launched a soft paywall, users in high-income countries who want to refer to more than seven pages of data per month must buy a paid subscription. Ethnologues 18th edition describes 228 language families and six typological categories, in 1986, William Bright, then editor of the journal Language, wrote of Ethnologue that it is indispensable for any reference shelf on the languages of the world. In 2008 in the journal, Lyle Campbell and Verónica Grondona said, Ethnologue. has become the standard reference. However, he concluded that, on balance, Ethnologue is a comprehensive catalogue of world languages. Starting with the 17th edition, new editions of Ethnologue are to be published every year, linguasphere Observatory Register Glottolog Lists of languages List of language families Martin Everaert, Simon Musgrave, Alexis Dimitriadis, eds. The Use of Databases in Cross-Linguistic Studies, linguistic Genocide in Education-or Worldwide Diversity and Human Rights. Evaluating language statistics, the Ethnologue and beyond

9.
Nassau (Cook Islands)
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Nassau is an island in the Cook Islands. Located 90 km south of Pukapuka, the island of Nassau is just 9 metres above sea level. It is covered with palms, and is the island of the Northern Group without a lagoon. The surrounding reef is 90 to 130 metres wide on all, the village is located in the north-west. Inland there are rich taro swamps and fruit groves, and offshore there is good fishing and it has a population of 71, according to the 2006 census, and a harbour was planned to be built in 2007, but construction had not started by then. In 2010 a small passage and mooring wharf had been dynamited out of the reef top. The evironnmental impact was small after the initial blasting Nassau is governed by the Pukapuka Island Council, the Nassau Island Committee advises the Pukapuka Island Council on matters of Nassau Island. Families live in thatched cottages called kikau, elliot Smith, in the Cook Islands Companion describes Nassau as a small garden of Eden. The island was damaged in February,2005 by Cyclone Percy. The Island now has a new school thanks to the NZAID Schools Refurbishment Programme. Because there is no airport, access is limited to ship from Rarotonga. The only permanent link with the world is a satellite earth station built in just four days by engineers from Telecom Cook Islands. Nassau originally belonged to the islanders of nearby Pukapuka and was called Te Nuku-o-Ngalewu which means Land of Ngalewu after the Pukapukan who was put in charge of it. When the two fell out with each other, it was renamed Deserted Island, supposedly by the islanders of Manihiki who drifted to the island and found it deserted. In 1803, it got yet another name – Adele Island – after the ship of the first discoverer, about 20 years later it was renamed Lydra Island by another explorer, then Ranger Island after the London whale ship Ranger. An American whaler, May Mitchell, decided in 1834 that it should bear his name, but it wasnt until a year later it that finally got the name it is known by today. Another American whaler, John D. Sampson named it after his vessel and it is not known why that name finally stuck, especially as another whale ship which sighted the island the following year tried to rename it New-Port Island